A blow from somewhere knocked the sword from his hand and he swung his knife in the general direction of this attack. He sensed a pair of legs leaping away, but in front of him appeared a looming figure lifting a spear high for a blow that must surely pass through him as easily as through the snow beneath him.
In the instant that it took for the spear to reach its zenith, Tirke felt his body futilely bracing itself for the dreadful impact, and the welling up of a great surge of cringing terror inside him. Yet even as the terror took shape, another emotion rose up and twined around it like a strangling serpent; a consuming fury, blazing from who could say what fire in his soul. Somehow he would kill this man even as he died.
This resolve had scarcely begun to reach his hand when the shado
